Snowmagic, Kalevalan Fantasy

By Laurel Jean Jackson

Snowmagic is a gripping story of ancient Finland from the dawn of the earth and the birth of the world's greatest sorcerer, the Eternal Bard. He sung a change into the world and that's when all the trouble began.

Written as an homage to the Finnish epic "The Kalevala", Snowmagic is an historical fantasy written with mythic exaggeration, larger-than-life characters and a forthright tale-telling style found in "The Kalevala". These oral stories passed from generation to generation, relate stories which, some say, harken back to the Paleolithic.

Grab a cup of coffee, slip into furry slippers and make yourself comfortable in the firelit inglenook and enjoy this trip to ancient Finland's furthest fields.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Laurel Jean Jackson
• Release date: Jan 18, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458056931

Laurel Jean Jackson

Laurel is a woman who has done just about everything. She worked as a dance hall girl in an Old West tourist show, an Extra in the movies, mapped Africa from space imagery, drilled for coal in Wyoming, was a nude model for art schools posing for Emanuel Martinez and Ned Jacob, worked as a reporter, a free-lance journalist and a graphic artist. She wrote a baby name book in 1996, now out of print and Snowmagic, Kalevalan Fantasy in 2011. She had erotic short stories included in anthologies and has won in Best Fiction category at the writing contest at Surrey International Writers' Conference. She lives near the sea in British Colombia, Canada.

Book preview

Part One

Songs of Change

The songs of by-gone eras sit impulsively upon my tongue. Eagerly they prompt me to sing joyfully and thus give them birth. I am not unwilling. For all their impulsiveness these songs are very old and filled with the wit and wisdom of The Ancients. Although outside the windows the mid-winter dark descends, the light wanes, the snow is blowing and the world is freezing cold, these old stories in my mouth are melting and tumbling from my tongue almost faster than I can say them. It’s as though I breathe them in as air but they come out as stories.

Take a quilt and a cup of coffee and curl up nicely in the fire lit inglenook. Hearth and fire go well with ancient songs to keep the winter’s dark away. Tuck your feet in furry slippers and hear the legends of times forgotten. These are songs which spring from the changeling songs of Vineamoannan, from the magic forge of Ilmari the Smith, from the crossbow of bitter Joukah, from the lustrous tresses of Kyulikki, from the wanton caresses of Ahti the lover, from the feather of a white raven as Lowhe, the witch, flies across the dark winter’s sky.

Fathers sang these songs to boys as they worked with knives and hatchets. Mothers sang to daughters as the spindles marked the time. Incantations brought the magic and the magic made us smile. I found these stories hiding on my travels and in the people that I met along the way. I gathered them like poppies in the fragrant fields of my imaginings. They were gifts given to me by my own little tree, the cheerful rowan. I plucked the words from among its berries, near scented vines and in fields fallow. The words came leaping after me as I walked in moonlit meadows like spritely Forestfolks eager to be found. Through the forest the words whispered in my wake as they gossiped with the trees. Many stories winter taught me as I hurried through the blizzard’s chill. Often my words came from the sweet mouths of birds. Trees have written sentences of these ancient legends each word coming slowly and with great dignity. Music came from the woman-scented seas. Waves of sea and heavy harvest grain sang to me as I rolled in their arms.

I walked in the moonlight, danced beneath the sun, listened to the birds and cavorted with trees until I could bundle up these stories. I moved them to my ancient cabin and hung them up to dry, hanging down before the hearth until all the words dripped to the ends and turned a golden brown. Then I laid them in a great carved chest lined with the written word, the hiding place of golden legends.

Long it lay lingering beneath my wooden rafters pushed aside by all that’s come since then. Sometimes at night when the moon shines full and fertile I think I hear them singing. Soft and distant voices singing songs and telling tales as night comes on the cusp of birdsong. From the chest of my imaginings lilts the music of the whole of creation. Shall I take down the magic chest and throw it open to add enchantment to this mid-winter’s night? Out of nature and from the darkness and the winter’s frozen words I send forth these cold and ancient legends.

Tonight, these tales I have kindled come from the North, from Finland’s furthest fields to illuminate our evenings. The telling of these tales reminds us of our past and our awareness warms the ancient heaths of Kalevala and those who trod there still. But, these are the legends of all of our ancestors, of people long before there were the places from which we say our families spring. From these ancient people we came to spread out across Europe and travel into Africa and cross the frozen arctic landbridge and gather along the coastlines hunting mighty whales and travel inland to the great and grassy plains. We all came from these stories and others like them.

Long after magic’s voice fades in the cruel and ruthless assault of rationality it sings still in the golden legends of times forgotten. Myth is the address of magic. Let’s open the box and see what flies out!

Chapter 1

She did not remember being born or ever dying. She thought perhaps she may not have done either. She simply winked into being, once upon a time. For there were no days, then, to begin existence upon. Nor nights. Just air. Just the endless, cloudless, sunless, moonless air. And she, of course, who flew through it. She had no mother or father to give her a name, so she called herself Ilmatar, Air-Spirit.

This air had no turbulence; no lightening to rip through it, no rain to fall gently from it and mostly it had no wind. She longed to share her air with things such as these, if such things existed. But they did not. Her air was empty, she was its only life and she was empty too. She had no answers to her many questions. All was silence.

She was of an older race which once ruled all that is. A people of heroic proportions who lived so long ago that nothing but the idea of them remains. They called themselves the Kaleva. We now remember their race as mythic giants. The Greeks called them Titans. The Celts knew them as the Fomors. The Norse knew them under the sea as the Aegir and at the heart of the fire as Logi. This great race has left only tales of themselves floating through the air waiting to blow into the lungs of a Bard and be blown out again as stories. But there were no Bards then so these tales were silent and Ilmatar could not breathe them in nor tell the stories. That, perhaps was the worst of it, having no one to listen even if she remembered the stories. So she simply flew along in the void.

Like maidens you may know, she grew restless within the narrow constraints of her maidenhood. But there was no end in sight to her solitude. The unknown seemed better than the flat and empty life she had. So, she decided to send a change out into the world.

All magical events come from a single idea, which is the seed of all beginnings. From that idea sprang the changes she wished for but it also continued out beyond her immediate needs and infused the emptiness around her with the seeds of change. As soon as her mind conjured up the thought of leaving, it became a possibility. And so she stepped down from the air uncertain as to what she would find. She was a little frightened of the unknown, something of which she had not even been aware before the thought made it real. The unknown now loomed before her and made her very uneasy.

As she stepped from the air she found herself in the sea. It was dark and empty but at least it was new. Here she could swim. She stretched her arms and swam through the endless waters of the world. She flew along the waves and delighted in the way the water splashed up and refreshed her body. There had been nothing like this in the air! She liked the drying salt on her skin which she dusted off and gave to the air. She flew across the surface of the glassy sea and laughed aloud with discovery.

With the passage of time, she grew weary of the new amusements to be had in the sea and began to wish she weren’t a lonely maiden any longer. With that thought, another change began to happen. The only waves upon the smooth seas had been caused by her flights through the water, but suddenly the waves grew excited because the Wind had been born.

Her intended mate was the Wind, but she had grown restless and left the air in which they were to have mated. So the Wind had to come down to the sea and blow over it in search of his lost love. And there he found her, bobbing in the restless waves. There was his Air-Spirit, but she was not Air-Sprit any longer, she was Water-Maiden. She sensed that he wanted her no matter where she went or by what name she called herself.

The Wind began to blow. The sea was whipped into foam. It crashed around her and she thrilled to feel it. She was buffeted and dashed along until it took her breath away. Her body warmed to the kiss of the Wind upon it. The Wind blew the sea into such tremendous waves that it lifted her, this great maiden, up into the air where he took her. He stormed into her womb and together they made a baby. Afterwards the Wind calmed to a loving gentle kiss upon her face. The sea smoothed to a glassy surface and a mist fell over the sea and in it she floated, the great Water-Mother.

She floated upon the misty water and was nourished by the sea which made her child grow large within her. She waited patiently but no child came forth from her fertile womb. Her belly began to feel as if it was on fire and great birth pangs tore at her. She cried out and rolled in the water and swam to ease the pains. She like many former maidens in a similar predicament rued the day she ever left home. She was sure had she stayed where she was supposed to be this baby would have been born quite painlessly and quickly. She felt the cold of the sea and suffered in great pain. The Wind nudged her in concern. She filled the empty air with the sound of her pain.

A long time passed. A moment slipped by. Without days and nights, time is fickle. Her cries echoed along the sea. Then from the air another sound came in answer to her cries. The call of a bird. It flew searching for a place to build a nest. With some surprise she extended her great knee from the sea. To the bird the kneecap looked like a large island and there it landed and built its nest. The bird laid six golden eggs. It hatched three and in the hatching Ilmatar felt as if her knee was on fire and jerked her knee back. The unhatched eggs fell into the sea and broke.

She felt badly about this and used her magic to create good things from the broken eggs. The parts which were broken in the sea she transformed into things of wondrous beauty. The parts of the eggs which were yolks became the sun. The parts which were white she turned into the moon. The mottled parts became the stars in the sky. What was dark became the clouds.

The ages passed quickly by her, and the eons beyond them and again a moment slipped by. Wallowing in the new sunshine and whimpering beneath the new moonlight still she swam. Below her was the quiet water and above her was the vacant sky. She lifted her head from the sea and began Creation.

She changed all she saw. She pointed her hand and there grew land jutting raggedly into the sea. With a dive beneath the waves she created the depths of the ocean. Toward the ragged land she rolled and smoothed out white sand beaches gently sloping to the water. The lands were growing, massive moving plates of reckless treeless earth moving slowly about in the sea, drifting into place. She swam a little from the shore and raised crags upon the waters and reefs below the waves. With a splash of her arm she gave birth to little islands in the ocean. The rocky hills she cleft with fjords. Upon the land she created first the Great Bear, the most sacred of all animals. All manner of other creatures winked into being on the barren land, in the sea and flying through the once vacant sky. She changed everything she touched. The young sun shone brightly upon the changes. All of this she gave birth to, but she still could not give birth to her child who sat contented within her womb.

What are you doing all this time inside me, my son? she cried.

****

It was dark there and quiet. He was alone with his thoughts. For many summers and winters he had hidden there within his mother’s womb. He was Vineamoannan the Eternal Bard. As his mother swam over the still waters and beneath the vacant sky he pondered there such questions as How to be? and Which way should I live?. He had much to think about and this long time spent within the womb of his Goddess Mother had made him wise. He learned much from his mother’s forgotten memories. He was a Bard, which is to say he was a wizard or magician. He sang his magic into being.

But in all these years he had spent growing wise and learning magic from his Goddess mother, he had never seen the moon nor beheld the sun. He had, at last, grown weary of his captivity. The narrow, dark walls of his enclosure stifled him and he wished to be free. He wished to stand in the open far from his little nest within his mother. It was time.

With his finger he shifted the bony lock. He crept through the yielding portals. At the threshold of his dwelling he rested a moment then with a deep breath threw himself from the doorway he spun and fell headlong down the tunnel toward the sea. He plunged with gusto into the bracing water and splashed to the surface laughing.

He rose from the sea and walked across the smooth beaches formed by his mother. He breathed deeply of the good air and felt a pleasant and welcoming Wind upon his face. The young sun was warm and the Great Bear walked upon the land with no trees. Vine rose up tall and proud and raised his arms overhead and sang his pleasure at his life. He turned around to look at the moon, to admire the sun, to observe the Great Bear and to study the small group of stars in the sky. He turned toward the sea to pay homage to his mother. His heart was filled with love for her and all she had created and pride at being her son. He watched his mother, Ilmatar, the Great Water Goddess. Under the sun and beyond the moon and away from him, her son, still the Water-Mother swims. Above the still waters and beneath the timeless sky she swims and always at her back the loving Wind, Vine’s father, follows.

Chapter 2

From that first man came many others to populate this new world. Some humans were sung into being by Vine to keep him company. These people mated and begot generations of offspring. Sometimes a human female would appeal to a God of the Wind or a God of the Fire and the resulting child would be a step-brother to Vine. Many of these Demi-Gods had magical powers, but none so great as Vine’s.

Over the years the Goddesses and Gods became less important to the people and so were seldom seen, for the Gods exist because people will them so. The Goddess, especially, fled from men’s minds and they turned their attention instead to Vine, their Eternal Bard. Vine did not forget his Goddess mother, but neither did he chide those who did. Vine and his people settled into life in the southern part of their land along the shoreline.

After many years went by and a moment slipped past, Vine the Eternal Bard had been pondering a question which had plagued him ever since he had stepped from the sea. The question was how to cover the barren hills and rock strewn valleys with growing things? He could sing many good things into being with his magic but he had no talent with green growing things.

He did all right singing people onto his world but his trees and plants withered. He had rolled this problem around in his head ever since he had come to stand on the rocky landscape. He found the solution to his problem, or rather the solution found him. Vine had been visiting the smaller villages located along the northern border when a village elder cautiously approached him.

Eternal Bard,...excuse me, sir, The man stuttered with his hat in his hands. There is something odd in the village. The people thought, well, they though you should look into it. It’s most odd.

Well? asked Vine peering at the nervous man from beneath his bushy white eyebrows. What is it then?

A child. A very odd child. Like no child I ever seen, the man said earnestly.

A child? Vine frowned. He didn’t usually involve himself with children; they made him ill at ease. But he followed the man just the same.

At the cabin of the village leader a small boy was sitting at the table. He was propped up with folded blankets and sipping a cup of spiced hot milk. He looked no more than two years old, barely out of wetting cloths. Vine looked about the cabin for another child, for this one didn’t seem so odd to him. But he was the only child visible. Vine scowled at the man who had summoned him. Before he could speak the child spoke to him.

Ah, you must be Vineamoannan, the Eternal Bard I’ve heard so much about. I am Sampsa Pellervoinen. Please sir, sit. Would you care for some refreshment? I’m sure these good people could be persuaded to provide a warm drink for someone of your renown. But, if not, you could simply conjure it, isn’t that right? The toddler lisped in a childish voice.

Everyone in the kitchen simply stared. To hear the flow of discourse of an intelligent, well spoken adult coming from the mouth of so tiny a child struck them dumb. They could not become accustomed to it and each time the boy opened his mouth and spoke the townsfolk were dumbfounded. Vine just sank to the chair the child had indicated and waited in rapt fascination for the boy to speak again.

The child laughed a deep hearty laugh and leaned back against his chair and looked at Vine. I have had the better part of the day to get used to your simple country folk gawking at me like I was a two headed gander. But, frankly, I expected more from the son of the Goddess, if the stories I have heard about you are true. You, I’m told, witnessed the creation of the world, the mountains, the fiords, the sun and moon he laughed, ...yet one small boy dumbfounds you!

Er, well boy it’s...it’s not every day one meets a child like you, that you must admit, Vine said as he stared at the puzzling youth. Where do you come from? Surely he’s not a child of the village? He’s not your son? he asked of the village elder who backed away shaking his head. Everyone responded as if they were glad not to claim such an ill-omened oddity.

He ain’t one of us, Vineamoannan, said the village elder. He came this morning from the North on foot with nothing on his back with which to make his way in the world.

And without parents! his wife clucked shaking her head disapprovingly.

Something’s not right, if you ask me, said another villager shaking his head. T’aint natural.

Having been used to being treated with respect and honor, the villager’s dismissal of him made Sampsa angry. Let’s just get something straight once and for all! he said slamming his tiny fist down on the table hard enough to make the cup jump on the table. I am Sampsa Pellervoinen! I don’t need your disdain and I won’t stand for it! I am the son of the Sampo!

What’s dis-tain? asked the wife. Her companions shrugged their shoulders.

The Sampo you say? replied Vine and he turned with new interest on his companion. There was once a Bard to my mother’s people, who lived long ago. He told stories of a magical chest, called a Sampo, which held great wonders, Vine mused aloud. I learned about it from my mother.

The very same! declared Sampsa happy to have found someone who seemed to understand what he had been trying to get through to the simple village people.

The story goes that once a magical gift was given by the Goddess. It was given only to women for they were made in her image and so were considered to be like Goddesses themselves, continued Vine for the benefit of the villagers. Women were the bearers of children and so were held in great awe. In those days the Goddess reigned supreme. The root of this female power, the gift from the Goddess, was stored in a bright-lidded chest for all to see. Wherever this chest went so went abundance. This golden chest became the envy of men who wanted this power for their hunting rites and to gain power over the women. But before the men could touch it, the chest was whisked away to a land beyond our borders and never seen again, the rumors said. Nowadays the gleam of that fabled Sampo is only seen in the twinkle in the eye of a woman ripe with child, or so the story goes. This magical gift to women.... fertility.

Ah! cooed the villagers always pleased with one of Vineamoannan’s stories.

The stories are true, said Sampsa I come from what you people call the Northlands. We call our land Sariola. We serve the Goddess there and Her Sampo, which was spirited away for safekeeping as you say. The Sampo is attended by priestesses. It lies at the very heart of our religion. It is true that it contains the source of women’s magic, fertility. Look at me; even though I have only lived two short years on this Earth, I am grown well beyond my years, as you can see for yourself. That is, if your eyes aren’t blinded by superstition, he said with a sniff toward the wide-eyed villagers.

It is because of my amazing parentage that I have grown so. Lowhe, the Priestess, named me for that which fathered me and I bear the name proudly... Two of the villagers snickered scornfully. ...and I will not be clucked over like a two headed duck! Sampsa shouted and scowled threateningly at the villagers seeking to intimidate them but succeeded only in looking very much like a petulant toddler.

With an irritated wave of his hand Vine silenced the snickering townspeople without taking his eyes off the fascinating child. Tell me, how did the Sampo come to be your father? asked Vine

Lowhe ordered the removal of the Sampo to its resting place under the hill. My mother and the other priestesses carried it, for only women have touched the Sampo for as long as anyone remembers. The priestesses were taking it to a safe place deep within the earth where the Sampo could fill the land with fertility and remain safely hidden. It had been raining and the path was muddy. My mother slipped and fell. The Sampo fell upon her and lay upon her belly for a moment until the others could come to her aid.

And that encounter rendered her pregnant, surmised Vine.

Yes. Nine months later I was born and my mother died in the birthing. She was seventy-six years old, said Sampsa. The villagers gasped and muttered quietly among themselves and stepped uneasily away from Sampsa to gather just within earshot at the other end of the cabin.

I was raised for the first two years by the priestesses themselves. They treated me well and Lowhe called me Sampsa, the son of the Sampo. I was happy there.

It sounds like a remarkable life. Why did you leave such a pleasant home then? Vine asked.

Yeah, why did ya come here anyway? grumbled one of the bolder villagers. The others muttered disparagingly. Who invited you? The villager’s wife added, It’s a good thing you don’t want none of our dis-tain cause you can’t have it!" Her voice died with the others when Vine turned an angry eye toward them.

Perhaps you’d be happier as the guest of my village, Vine said to Sampsa without taking an eye off the villagers who squirmed uneasily under the powerful Bard’s gaze. Sampsa agreed and jumped to his feet eager to distance himself from his inhospitable hosts.

As they rode on Vine’s great blue elk through the desolate countryside of Kalevala, Vine repeated his earlier question. Why did you say you left such a happy home in Sariola?

I like to grow things. That is what I must do. I had already helped spread growing things throughout the Northlands and I had run out of barren land to green. The plants provided the people with plentiful harvests of delicious food. When I saw there was a land beyond our borders which was stark and barren I asked Lowhe if I might go and work there. She sent me with her blessings. Now that I’m gone the land will stay rich and fertile because the Sampo feeds the earth from its home under the hill. I only gave it a way to manifest itself in the world by providing the growing things which feed off the Sampo’s strength.

Remarkable, boy, remarkable. The power of fertility itself. Imagine that old story being true, Vine mused. Well young one, I want to have these rocky hills green with growing things. We make our way by fishing in the seas and hunting but it is not enough. I freely admit I am no good at singing green things. It was a problem that I have long sought an answer to. I can see the answer has come in the form of you, little Sampsa Pellervoinen. I can think of no one better suited to green this barren landscape than you, he said as he waved an arm indicating the barren rock-strewn landscape. We have no Sampo to keep it green but perhaps we can achieve a measure of fertility despite this fact. In exchange, I’ll sing you up a cabin in my village near the sea.

Done! smiled Sampsa. But don’t make it too large, I’ve got a bit of growing to do myself yet! I am curious to see if I can green your land without the Sampo to help. As they travelled through the countryside they fell silent as Sampsa began to plan his landscaping.

Vine was true to his word and sung a house that was just right for Sampsa. It was cozy and warm with windows looking out to sea. The chairs and tables were small, just right for the wee man. The bed was tiny and low to the ground. The roof came to Vine’s chest, the windows to his knees and all the dishes were Sampsa-sized. Vine sung magic into the little house which allowed the child-sized cabin to grow with Sampsa so that one day it would be a normal sized cabin when Sampsa reached his full height. Vine had to sing all the cabins in his land into being because there were no trees to make cabins from but this one was his favorite cabin. He took pleasure watching it grow over the years.

Tiny Sampsa was true to his word as well and went to work immediately using the fertility magic he was born with and created the fertile fields of Kalevala. He sowed swamps, fjords, mountainsides and filled the meadows with flowers. In the mountains he sowed pine trees and in the valleys shaking aspens. Saplings rose in ripening anticipation. The land grew gently green. The saplings grew and leaves began to sprout and blossoms became berries. He planted flowers of every color to delight the eye and scented them with perfume to delight the heart. All over Kalevala, the earth was greening. In every marsh, hillock, swamp and valley Sampsa brought fruitfulness and beauty there much as he had done in the lush Northlands. It didn’t grow quite as quickly as he was used to, many tender saplings died and it took a lot of work to keep the plants alive. But with his remarkable green thumb Kalevala was greening nicely.

Except for the mighty oak. That, he could not grow, try though he would, it would not grow. Vine came one day, to see what Sampsa had done. He saw the seeds coming up and the saplings growing and this made him very happy and he smiled at the tiny trees. Then he came to the oak. Sampsa tried everything he could think of to get the acorns he made to sprout. Nothing worked.

Perhaps, muttered Vine as he heaved himself up and walked thoughtfully down to the sea. Perhaps the Goddess, my mother, will help us.

Vine walked down to the sea and began to sing to the waves. Mother Goddess, creator of all! Vine sang. Send to us the child of the acorn. She who gives us the mighty Oak will be praised and honored as long as there are Kalevalans left to speak her name. We want to shelter under its boughs and lean upon its mighty trunk. Send us the giant Oak! sang Vine in his most beautiful and beseeching voice. Vine looked to the earth to see what would come of it.

When nothing burst through the soil, Vine turned and walked out along the beach to the very tip of the land. The fog was wafting in from the ocean and all was still except for the gentle lapping of the waves upon the shore. He let his eyes comb the surface of the sea, as he always did hoping to catch a glimpse of his mother.

Suddenly, a great bubbling occurred a small distance from shore. From the midst of the bubbles stepped three Sea Maids. They were dazzlingly beautiful. They had long, blue hair which curled around their nude bodies. They had skin the colors of coral and pale greenish water